PayPal is under pressure right now. Stock has been falling. Job cuts are also being planned. Still, the company is talking about a reset in direction rather than slowing down.
During its first-quarter earnings call, CEO Enrique Lores repeated one idea several times. PayPal wants to return to being a technology company again. That line was not just messaging for investors. It set the tone for everything else in the discussion. A big part of that direction is artificial intelligence. AI is not being treated as a side tool anymore. It is now being placed inside the core of how PayPal works.
Lores said companies that stay competitive are the ones that keep changing. For PayPal, that means rebuilding parts of its system. It also means moving faster and becoming more cloud-based over time. He also talked about development work. The company wants AI inside coding workflows. Not just for testing or support. Actual development speed is part of the plan now. This is where things get interesting. Many tech firms already use AI heavily for coding. Some rely on it every day. PayPal, according to its own comments, is still in early stages compared to others.
Across the industry, this shift has already happened. Developers use AI for writing code, fixing bugs, and even planning systems. In some companies, AI usage is tracked closely, almost like performance data. PayPal is trying to catch up to that stage. Not experiment, but fully integrate it. To support this, the company has created a new internal group focused on AI transformation. That team will look at how work is done across departments.
The focus is not only on tools. It is a process change. That means looking at how work flows inside the company and where it can be simplified or removed. Lores said this could create major savings. Around $1.5 billion over a few years was mentioned during the call. That number includes both AI use and internal restructuring. PayPal has already started reshaping its structure. The business is now split into three parts. One covers checkout and core services. Another includes consumer tools like Venmo. The third focuses on payments and crypto services.
At the same time, reports indicate a large-scale workforce reduction plan. Roughly 20 percent over time. That could impact more than 4,500 employees. The company calls it simplification. Fewer layers. Faster decisions. Still, combining AI adoption with job cuts creates concern. That part is hard to ignore. AI is also expected to move into other areas. Customer support is one. Risk detection is another. Even operations could change. In support roles, AI may handle simple queries first. In risk systems, it may help identify fraud patterns earlier. These changes are already happening in other companies, too.
PayPal is closely linking these changes to cost reduction. That is a key detail in its strategy. Financial results explain some urgency. Revenue for the quarter was $8.4 billion. That shows growth compared to last year. But future guidance was weaker. That affected market confidence and pulled the stock lower. A longer trend also matters. Since the 2021 peak, PayPal’s stock has dropped heavily. Growth has slowed. Expectations changed. So this AI shift is not happening in isolation. It sits inside a wider turnaround attempt. Venmo also came up during the discussion. It has been placed into its own segment inside the new structure.
When asked about selling it, Lores avoided a direct answer. He said the current structure makes sense for now. But he also said decisions depend on value creation for shareholders. That keeps options open. Right now, PayPal is still adjusting. Structure changes, cost cuts, and AI plans are all happening together.
Whether it works depends less on announcements and more on execution over time.
